As the global awareness for good quality healthcare services is increasing, it is becoming challenging for the healthcare industry to meet this demand.
As a result, healthcare institutions are under tremendous pressure at the present time due to the large gap between healthcare seekers and healthcare service providers.
In this scenario, utilizing the latest technology and taking the healthcare sector digital is an excellent idea. One such implementation of this idea is developing a mobile application.
The scope of healthcare applications is increasing day by day. Speaking factually, there are more than 231,000 healthcare applications available on Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store combined.
Moreover, out of all these applications, more than 5,000 are used to book a doctor’s consultation, and some are even specially developed for this purpose.
Consequently, doctor appointment app development is a highly profitable idea. However, the important question is, how can one make an appointment booking app that increases the efficiency of the healthcare services?
Well, this question is very frequently asked by healthcare institution owners who are looking for solutions to increase their operational efficiency. This detailed and highly informative blog will guide you on your way to creating a high-end healthcare mobile app from start to end.
Make sure to read the blog until the very end, as we have covered the complete process to build a doctor appointment booking app.
The paradigm of the healthcare sector is rapidly changing, owing to the increasing use of technology. To explain, calling a healthcare institution to book a consultation with a physician is an outdated idea and is considered obsolete by not just patients but also numerous healthcare service providers.
The latest trend is to utilize digital technologies like websites and mobile applications to schedule an appointment with a doctor.
To illustrate, here is complete information on the increasing market demand for medical scheduling technology.
Moreover, owing to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare institutions have further realized the importance of digitalization and of creating a doctor appointment app. It is commonly known that digitalization is fundamental to boosting a business’s revenue and generating a higher ROI.
As a result, by building a mobile app, healthcare institutions like hospitals and clinics can generate better profit and increase their efficiency.
Here are some facts and figures that emphasize on the importance of building a doctor appointment booking app for your clinic/hospital.
You must be clear by now that creating a doctor appointment booking app is not just another app development idea but a trend and business requirement.
In the previous section, we provided statistical data that showed why the development of a doctor appointment app is a good idea. Moving further, we will provide more evidence-based examples on the subject and will discuss the importance of mobile apps in the healthcare industry.
Developing a mobile application can help healthcare institutions like hospitals and clinics to increase their sales and, therefore, generate higher profit.
Moreover, digital technology enables healthcare institutions to automate processes, further reducing operational costs and increasing profit.
It is commonly known that manually conducted processes are prone to human error. However, one can significantly avoid these errors by integrating digital technology and building a mobile app.
The results generated from these processes are reliable, precise, and highly efficient, therefore improving the overall management of your healthcare institution.
Having all your data digitally stored will not just ensure its security but will also enable your institution to seamlessly use it for strategic planning and management.
By having a mobile app for your hospital/ clinic, you can easily structure, organize, and modify your data and generate the desired results. Integrating technologies like cloud computing can further enhance the benefits of this technology.
Digital technology is highly capable of automating various processes of a healthcare institution and therefore reduces the requirement for human resources.
Consequently, one can significantly save on the costs of hiring human resources and retain higher revenue.
It is commonly known that if you make an app for booking doctor appointments, you can provide 24X7 healthcare services to your patients.
This makes managing a health emergency easier and more efficient. Moreover, the patients can receive healthcare services in less time and at any location.
Having a digital presence is an excellent marketing tactic and ensures better customer retention. Therefore, when you develop a mobile app for your healthcare institution, you can win over the competition and increase patient retention rates.
Moreover, mobile applications are known to increase customer engagement, making their development an excellent idea for business growth and expansion.
Patients with severe and complicated medical conditions require immediate medical attention and quick access to healthcare services, which is a challenge at the present time.
However, by having a mobile healthcare application, patients can gain access to high-quality healthcare services at any given time.
Hospitals and clinics that develop a doctor appointment booking app can offer seamless appointment scheduling to their patients.
The patients can schedule, reschedule and cancel appointments at any time of the day. All it takes is a few steps, and patients can easily receive a consultation.
Mobile applications can be integrated with various payment gateways through which patients can easily pay their medical bills.
As a result, one does not need to rely on cash or other physical payment methods while availing healthcare services.
Having a mobile app makes it easy for patients to generate, access, and track their past medical records. This medical history is of high importance to physicians in determining the scope of further treatments.
Patients can use a mobile app integrated with IoT-based wearables to automatically schedule emergency appointments. These wearable constantly track the wearer’s vitals and takes necessary actions whenever an abnormality is detected, therefore ensuring the patient’s wellness.
These were a few of many reasons why healthcare institutions should consider doctor booking app development. Moving further, let’s look at some of the most popular healthcare mobile applications on the internet.
This will allow us to find the features that need to be considered while planning to build an app for booking doctor appointments. Moreover, we can find various unique features and add them to our app as well, and gain a competitive advantage.
Competitor analysis is a crucial part of developing a mobile application. One can significantly avoid the chances of app failure and create a high-end mobile app by studying the competitors.
Developing a doctor appointment booking app requires businesses to determine their potential competitor’s strengths, weaknesses, features, and USPs and compare them with their own.
This will enable them to discover tremendous market opportunities and deliver high-end healthcare services to patients. Therefore, let’s find out what are some of the top doctor booking mobile applications.
Mayo Clinic is a non-profit organization aiming to increase the quality of healthcare services and promote research and education in the industry. The organization has undertaken the development of a doctor appointment app to facilitate patients to book a doctor’s appointment on the go.
Mayo Clinic is known to have listed some of the most well-recognized physicians that provide top-quality healthcare services on the digital platform.
Zocdoc is a doctor marketplace (which will be discussed in the upcoming section) and is a complete solution for e-healthcare. The platform has enlisted doctors of various specialties for the patients to choose from.
As a result, the quality of healthcare services is enhanced, as the patients can select the physician on various criteria such as experience, rating, specialty, etc.
Moreover, Zocdoc has also integrated various high-end features like checkup reminders, verified reviews, insurance benefits, insurance claims management, etc.
Therefore, it can be said that Zocdoc did not just create an app for doctor appointments but for complete healthcare solutions.
Want to know more about Zocdoc? Check out their mission video here:
HealthTap is a concierge application for the healthcare industry and enables patients to connect with the right doctors and insurance companies at the right time.
Moreover, the mobile application provides the users with information on various diseases and health concerns, as per the data uploaded by other users.
Patients can also use the platform to schedule appointments with physicians on the go and avail healthcare services.
We recommend you carefully examine all the features of the HealthTap application and consider them while making a doctor appointment app. This is because this application is highly popular and known for its high-end features.
For Members
For Doctors
Health Buddy is a Singapore-based application and is known for providing smart health care to patients. The mobile application contains critical data on health conditions, symptoms, treatments, recommendations, and more.
The patients can make use of this information and get a primary diagnosis, and then, a more advanced and accurate, personal diagnosis.
Health Buddy is an application that has some of the most noteworthy features for one to consider while planning doctor booking app development.
You might find some bad reviews of this app on the app store and play store. However, this application has integrated some of the best features for doctor appointment booking applications.
Therefore, we recommend considering this application to develop a high-quality doctor appointment booking app.
Doctor On Demand is an application for patients to connect with doctors at any time, from anywhere. Moreover, the patients can also receive a personalized treatment plan and get clarity on their questions through the app.
The application is developed for both emergency and non-emergency healthcare concerns and facilitates doctor-patient discussion through video calls.
Do check out the application’s features in order to incorporate them into your own clinic appointment app development project.
This was it for our list of top 5 healthcare mobile applications on the internet. Upon carefully looking at each of the above-mentioned applications, you will realize every app has certain unique features that are worth considering.
However, to get an in-depth analysis of these applications, you will need to download and use each of these applications. This will make your doctor appointment booking app development process seamless and efficient.
In the next section, we will discuss the different business models for healthcare applications, so make sure to read carefully.
While developing a mobile application, a business has to take various factors into account. One such important factor is the business model, as it determines the application’s features and end-performance.
Creating a business model is a process that requires determining the target market, calculating possible expenses, planning activities, determining marketing channels, figuring out value propositions, etc.
When you plan to create a doctor scheduling app, there are two business models you can choose from – “doctor marketplace” and “dedicated clinic”.
In order to understand which of these models will be best for you, you need to understand each model’s concept and its pros and cons.
Doctor marketplace is an all-in-one platform where patients can find a list of various doctors specializing in different fields. This model is similar to the Amazon marketplace, and therefore, it is simpler to understand it using Amazon’s business model.
In the Amazon marketplace model, the buyers and sellers can enlist themself and fulfill their needs from an e-commerce platform.
The platform acts as a middleman and earns money in the form of commission. Moreover, one can find numerous sellers enlisted on the platform and select as per their preferences.
This concept, when implemented in healthcare applications, results in doctor marketplace business model. These platforms link patients with physicians and aim to improve the quality of healthcare services.
The users can find doctors of various specialties on a single platform and connect with them with ease.
The users can select a doctor on the basis of their ratings, experience, expertise, core specialties, etc., and get a consultation online.
Building an app for doctor appointments using the doctor marketplace model has its own pros and cons, which are mentioned below:
Every healthcare institution aims for its operations to go as seamlessly as possible. In this scenario, it is ideal to build an on-demand appointment app and digitalize your healthcare institution.
To suit their individual requirements, healthcare institution owners can customize the features depending upon their needs using this model.
Let's understand this concept with the help of an example.
Let's say Bob is a doctor who runs a clinic. Christina, too, is a doctor owning a clinic. Bob is looking for an application that allows patients to schedule appointments.
On the other hand, Christina needs an app where her patients can book appointments online and see how many patients are waiting at the time of the appointment booking. Both Bob and Christina want to make a doctor appointment booking app but with different goals in mind. This goal is possible to achieve with the dedicated clinic model.
It is important to note that one cannot fulfill these objectives with the marketplace model, which does not allow customization, and each clinic must use the common features that the platform provides.
Developing a mobile application dedicatedly for healthcare institutions can serve various purposes. Depending upon your requirements, you can develop a clinic management app to facilitate digital appointment booking, practice better clinic management, or even for both of these reasons.
Therefore, we recommend you make a doctor appointment booking app with this model if you are a clinic/ hospital owner looking for better process efficiency.
Moving further, let’s take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of this approach.
We hope that by now, you are clear on the two business models of healthcare booking applications. It is essential that you choose the right model while making an app for doctor appointments to generate high returns.
If you have more questions about these models, you can always connect with us. We are the top healthcare mobile app development company and have ample experience in the field. Connect with us today and get a free consultation from our experts.
Now that you are aware of the business models in healthcare apps, it is time to actually develop the mobile app.
In order to build a mobile application, we need to know what features are added to healthcare applications. Therefore, let’s take a look at the features of a healthcare app.
Generally speaking, a mobile app’s features are divided into two parts. These are MVP features and advanced features. While MVP features are basic and fundamental for app development, advanced features are good to have and optional.
As a rule of thumb, you need to determine the type of features you wish to add depending upon your individual requirements.
In the context of on-demand doctor app development, the MVP features and advanced features will highly depend upon your business model and end goals.
Therefore, to create a successful application, it is necessary that you are clear on your end goals. Now that you are clear on what mobile app features fundamentally are let’s find out the different features for different roles in a healthcare application.
These are the general features that are commonly found in healthcare applications. It is important to note that not all of these features will be a perfect fit for your application.
To find the features that are useful for your particular app, you must consult with an expert app development agency like The Gray Bear and send in your requirements.
The patients can use the platform to create a patient profile and add all the necessary information needed for medical consultation.
This information is of high importance, as it can serve as the basis for the physician’s initial diagnosis. Patients can add general details and health-specific details and improve the efficiency of their consultation.
The platform enables the app users to search for physicians holding expertise in their particular area of concern.
One can choose from various medical specialties (Dentist, Dermatologist, Oncologist, etc.) and book an appointment with the doctor. You can further add value to this feature by adding filters based on ratings, experience, location, etc.
Once the patients have found the right doctor, they can easily schedule an appointment with them. The patients can choose from various time slots and select the one that is convenient to them.
Moreover, the patients can also reschedule and cancel an appointment at their convenience using the application. It is important to note that some applications and physicians charge a cancellation fee, depending upon their policies.
Reviews are one of the best ways to receive user feedback and improve your platform’s services. The users can utilize this feature to review their consultation experience and even the application.
These reviews serve as the foundation of the mobile app and are a critical feature in doctor appointment app development.
The patients can seek support in case of dissatisfaction from medical consultation as well as other application-related concerns.
It is commonly known that providing user support and working on resolving user queries is the key to user retention, making this feature highly important and noteworthy.
The notification feature enables the patients to stay up-to-date with the application. Once the users make an appointment request to a certain physician, they can use the notification feature to find whether their consultation is confirmed or not.
Moreover, one can receive various other important communication through this feature.
The present-day users prefer the online payment mode more than its offline counterpart. You can deliver up to this need by integrating a payment gateway to your healthcare mobile app and offering app users ways to pay online.
Generally speaking, debit card and credit card are two of the most fundamental payment options in applications.
Other than these, there are various third-party payment gateways that are integrated with the mobile apps and are connected with the user’s bank account.
Here is the complete list of some of the most popular payment gateways across different regions.
| Continents | Payment Gateway |
|---|---|
| Latin America |
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| Asia |
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| Europe |
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| Middle East |
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| Oceania |
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| Africa |
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Medical history is of high importance in the healthcare industry and serves as the foundation of various treatments. By integrating this feature in healthcare mobile applications, the patients can easily add all their medical history to the platform.
This will not only enable the doctors to provide high-quality treatment but will also benefit the user to find the most relevant healthcare service providers (integrating big data and custom algorithm).
On-demand doctor appointment app development calls for creating doctor profiles for the users to browse through and select for medical consultation.
The doctors can add various details to their profile, such as their medical qualifications, years of experience, areas of expertise, testimonials, etc., and attract users to book a consultation.
The doctors can either accept or reject the consultation request based on their availability using this feature.
Once the physician confirms/ rejects the appointment request, the patients are notified about the same through the in-app notification feature and email.
The doctors can use the mobile application to conduct consultations online. This feature is worth considering as it has the potential to change the paradigm of the healthcare industry for good.
People living in underdeveloped areas can benefit from high-quality healthcare services and lead a healthy lifestyle owing to this feature.
Electronic Health Record (EHR) is one of the most revolutionary innovations in the tech industry. Doctors can use this feature to access the health records of patients and create a treatment plan based on the same.
EHR includes critical patient information such as previously diagnosed illnesses, treatments taken, main health concerns, etc., and is highly important in healthcare mobile application development.
With the increasing popularity of telemedicine, one can expect to receive a tremendous response from users and, therefore, a plethora of consultation requests.
As a result, it is essential that healthcare institutions have a medium to efficiently manage these requests. By using this feature, the healthcare staff can ensure that all the appointments are optimally queued and are not overlapping each other.
The patient might require certain medical and non-medical support while using the application. This is possible through the patient support feature.
For instance, the administrative staff of a healthcare institution can use this feature to receive patients’ grievances from the received services.
This feature enables the staff to manage the payments received from the patients and efficiently undertake finance management of the healthcare institution.
This feature is highly important and can be integrated with other technologies like finance management software for the complete automation of financial processes.
Artificial Intelligence is a breakthrough in the technology sector and has various implementations. While undertaking doctor appointment booking application development, integrating AI-based primary diagnosis can be a USP to your application.
This feature has the ability to cut short the illness possibilities based on your symptoms. This, in turn, will help you narrow down the doctors to consult with and treatment possibilities.
This feature enables the users to seek medical assistance at any time of the day, on any day of the week.
As a result, by providing a 24/7 medical assistance feature to your app, you can not only improve the patient satisfaction rate but also contribute to the development of the healthcare industry.
It is commonly known that mobile phone users usually ignore push notifications and sometimes even remove them without taking a look.
In this scenario, relying on push notifications to remind patients about their upcoming consultations is not likely to cause any benefit.
One way to overcome this challenge is to automate consultation reminders in the healthcare application.
You can integrate your mobile app with simple technologies like email and calendar and even more complex ones like IoT-enabled wearables to give strong and memorable unforgettable reminders to your patients.
Along with online consultation, online medicine delivery is also gaining immense popularity in the healthcare sector.
The patients can use this feature to order the prescribed medicines online from the nearest supplying pharmacy with ease. This feature is highly useful, especially for patients with mobility disabilities.
Healthcare emergencies are common, especially amongst patients with severe illnesses and health concerns. As a result, the development of a healthcare app with an emergency care feature can turn out to be a life-saving concept.
This is a smart feature based on IoT technology and can notify the doctor outside the application in case of patient emergencies and even call an ambulance, making it highly useful for the patients.
Doctors can utilize this feature to provide expert lifestyle tips for better health. This feature can enable the doctors to add concern-specific tips and even general healthcare tips for the patients to see and implement in everyday life.
This feature can turn out to be a gamechanger in the healthcare application market.
The doctors can keep track of appointments by using this feature and be reminded of the upcoming appointments.
This feature, if implemented correctly during doctor appointment mobile app development, can be a complete assistant to the doctor and increase the institution’s efficiency.
The application admin can manage the patient and doctor profiles on the application and check their activity.
In case you choose to go with the dedicated clinic model, you must know that the doctor is the admin of the application and can manage patient and staff profiles.
This feature enables the admin to manage the received payments and even pay further. In the case of doctor marketplace applications, the admin needs to pay the doctor for every consultation.
On the other hand, in dedicated clinic applications, the doctor has to pay the staff for their services.
One of the most crucial features of an admin panel is to generate analytics and reports. These analytics are highly useful to get insight information on the app user’s activity and facilitates strategic decision-making.
One can track the user’s demographics, time spent on the application, and various other factors from this feature.
If you are planning doctor booking app development with the dedicated clinic model, this feature can be an excellent solution to your needs.
You can use this feature to manage your staff’s attendance, activity, payroll, and more and make your app a complete solution for the human resource management of your clinic.
User support is one of the most essential features of an admin. Whether you choose to go with the dedicated clinic model or the doctor marketplace model, you need to provide support to the app users.
This includes hearing user queries and grievances and providing a solution to them. Integrating this feature can add to the user experience of your app and increase its value.
This was it for the features of a healthcare mobile application. As said earlier, the exact features your particular application will require will depend on various side factors. One of the most important factors is the choice of business model.
We suggest consulting with an experienced doctor appointment app development company to get the best solutions for your requirements.
Moreover, it is a commonly known fact that there is immense competition in the market. One way to overcome this competition is to build a doctor appointment app with the latest features.
Take a look at the following section to find out the most unique and highly demanded features in healthcare mobile apps.
Pathology tests are a vital part of numerous medical diagnoses. However, it might not always be possible for the patient to visit a pathology lab to submit a sample.
In this case, adding a feature for at-home pathology sample collection can be your USP to successful doctor appointment booking application development.
This feature enables you to enlist various pathology labs from different localities on your application. These pathology labs, upon request, can collect the patient’s samples from their residence.
The results of these tests can be sent to the consulting physician and the patient via email. This will make the process of pathological examination easier, efficient, and hassle-free for the patient as well as the physician.
Patients with certain conditions require constant vital monitoring. However, it is challenging for a healthcare institution as well as for patients to check vitals every now and then.
One can overcome this challenge by integrating IoT-based wearables for vital monitoring with healthcare mobile applications.
These wearables constantly monitor the key vital signs of the wearer, such as heart rate, breathing rate, body temperature, and blood pressure.
Moreover, since these devices are integrated with the mobile application, they can alarm the patient and the physician whenever any of these vitals seem abnormal.
Consequently, this technology can be a life-saving revolution when implemented in your online doctor scheduling app development project. This makes smart vital-monitoring an exceptional addition to your app development project.
These were a few of the most popular examples of tech innovations in the healthcare industry. Now that you are aware of what features you need to consider to develop a doctor appointment booking app, it is time we go with the actual development process.
Understanding the development process will enable you to create a doctor scheduling app with high success potential and seamless performance.
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Developing a mobile app is a complex task involving various steps and processes. Depending upon your app’s complexity and the number of features you wish to integrate, the development cost and time requirement for your app will vary.
To elaborate, when you plan to create a doctor appointment booking app, there are several steps you need to accomplish to get successful results. Below given is the step-by-step process of creating a high-end healthcare application for your business.
As the top doctor appointment app development company, we suggest adhering to these steps to gain the most out of the application.
Market research forms the basis of the application designing and development process and is undoubtedly one of the most critical steps. Previously we discussed the importance of competitor research as a tool to understand the popular healthcare application features.
This is the stage where you start formulating and shaping ideas for your doctor appointment app development project and is, therefore, a critical phase.
We recommend conducting thorough market research to create a solid plan for your app project. Here is what you must focus on while conducting market research:
SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis is an excellent business growth tool and is an impeccable research and analysis tool in strategic management.
While taking your healthcare institution online, it is highly recommended that you give ample time to conducting and understanding the outcomes of SWOT Analysis.
SWOT analysis can provide insightful information on various internal and external factors for healthcare institutions planning online doctor appointment app development. Here are the four elements of SWOT analysis and their meaning.
In the earlier section, we discussed the different business models in online doctor consultation app development. In this step, you have to choose whether you want to develop a doctor marketplace application or a dedicated clinic app.
The development process, technology stack, features, app development time, cost, and various other factors will depend from model to model.
Most of the healthcare institutions planning to develop an app for doctor appointments are unaware of the different development approaches.
Primarily speaking, there are three ways to develop a mobile application: DIY development, hiring a team, and outsourcing app development. Here is a brief of each of these approaches:
In this approach, the app owner undertakes the application design and development process. One can do this either by self-programming or by using an app builder.
However, mobile app development is a complete process and requires different expertise at different stages. As a result, developing an app by yourself will result in compromised app quality.
In this approach, the application’s owner hires a team to work on the app development project. This option is recommended for large-scale applications that require consistent maintenance and upgradation.
However, if you build an app for booking doctor appointments through an in-house team, the cost of your app development project will be extremely high.
This is because one has to take into account numerous expenses of hiring full-time employees.
This is one of the most popularly chosen options when considering business app development. Speaking factually, 60% prefer to outsource their app development project.
You can choose either a freelancer or an app development outsourcing agency for this approach. Our recommendation is to go with outsourcing agencies if you are looking for a robust, functional, and high-quality mobile application.
Each of these approaches has its own pros and cons and will significantly impact the quality of the final application. Therefore, we recommend you to make conscious and careful choices when selecting a development team.
This step is mandatory if you choose to outsource app development for your on-demand doctor appointment app development project. However, you can safely skip this step if you choose to develop an app on your own or through an in-house team.
It is commonly known that different locations have different salaries, and so the development cost of an app varies from location to location.
Therefore, you must analyze and select a location to make an appointment booking app where the development costs are lowest.
We will be discussing this topic in the next section of the blog, so make sure to read until the end.
An appealing UI/ UX design is the foundation of a successful application. Here, UI/ UX designers, upon understanding the application’s features, come up with design ideas for the app’s screens.
The development of a healthcare app requires a well-curated and functional design to facilitate easy navigation and high performance.
Therefore, if you want to deliver a high-end user experience, it is highly important to focus on app design.
Sketching, wireframing, mockup creation, and prototyping are the stages of designing a mobile application. For the design and development of an online doctor appointment system, you must follow this complete process.
This is the part where the actual coding process takes place. Taking the UI design and technology stack into consideration, the developers undertake the task of application programming.
The technologies you will choose for app development will vary depending on whether you want to develop a cross-platform application or a native one.
Our recommendation is to choose the native development approach and build a doctor appointment app for Android and iOS platforms separately.
This way, you can deliver a high-end user experience and a fast-performing mobile app to your market.
Freshly developed applications are likely to have bugs and errors in them. These bugs are a result of negligence in the design and development stage.
It is essential to remove these bugs before launching the app to optimize its performance and quality and deliver a high-end user experience.
After you have finished the development of doctor booking app, you must conduct alpha and beta testing on your application. Here is what alpha and beta testing are in the app development process:
Here, the app is tested by the person/ institution undertaking app development. Alpha testing usually eliminates the majority of bugs and errors and is undertaken by experts in the field.
Here, the application is tested by people outside the organization to get a fresh perspective on the app’s quality and user interface. Generally speaking, the end-users conduct beta testing of the mobile app.
Below is a more in-depth difference between alpha and beta testing of online doctor scheduling app development.
Source: Coding Ninjas
Once you are done with the application testing and have rectified the errors, you are all set to launch your mobile app on the OS platform. The OS platforms review the application before making them available on their stores to ensure optimum quality and safety.
This was it for the process of building an on-demand doctor appointment app. By following this process, you will be able to develop a high-quality and value-driven mobile application for your business.
Now that you know how to develop a doctor appointment booking app, you must also be wondering how much it will cost to make a doctor booking app.
Well, the answer to this question is highly subjective. A lot of factors that go into the app development process vary from one situation to another.
That wasn’t a satisfactory answer, right? So, let’s find out the estimated cost of developing a mobile healthcare app in the upcoming section of this blog.
Want to develop a high-end mobile application for online doctor booking?
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There are various ways to find out the cost of doctor appointment booking app development. We can either calculate the cost of developing the application based on the type of features or on the basis of app development location.
It is a commonly known fact that the more features you add to your application, the more it will cost to design and develop.
Moreover, as we discussed earlier, all the features of healthcare applications are divided into MVP features and advanced features.
The cost of developing each feature will be highly variable. Here is how much doctor appointment mobile app development features will cost.
Please note, these are only approximate costs based on our past projects. Your particular application’s cost can be higher or lower than the below-given costs.
| Feature | Development Cost (USD) |
|---|---|
| Patient MVP Features | |
| Create Patient Profile | $600 – $800 |
| Search for Doctors | $250 – $400 |
| Schedule, Reschedule & Cancel Appointments | $800 – $1000 |
| Review Services | $300 – $400 |
| Seek User Support | $1200 – $1600 |
| Notification | $1100 – $1400 |
| Make Payments | $1000 – $1200 |
| Add Medical History | $500 – $900 |
| Doctor MVP Features | |
| Create Doctor Profile | $600 – $800 |
| Accept/ Reject Consultation Request | $500 – $800 |
| EHR Access | $900 – $1200 |
| Staff MVP Features | |
| Manage Appointment Queue | $1200 – $1600 |
| Provide Patient Support | $1300 – $1600 |
| Payment Management | $1200 – $1600 |
| Total Cost for MVP Development | $11450 – $15300 |
| Feature | Development Cost (USD) |
|---|---|
| Patient Advanced Features | |
| AI-integrated Diagnosis | $3000 – $4000 |
| 24/7 Medical Assistance | $2500 – $3200 |
| Automated Consultation Reminders | $2800 – $3200 |
| Online Medical Delivery | $5000 – $6000 |
| Doctor Advanced Features | |
| Emergency Care | $3000 – $3200 |
| Healthcare Tips | $2000 – $2300 |
| Advanced Appointment Request | $1500 – $1800 |
| Total Time & Cost for Advanced Features | $19800 – $26500 |
| Feature | Development Cost (USD) |
|---|---|
| Admin Panel Features | |
| Patient & Doctor Profile Management | $2000 – $2400 |
| Payment Management | $1700 – $2000 |
| Analytics & Report Generation | $3000 – $4000 |
| Staff Management | $2500 – $2800 |
| Providing User Support | $1500 – $2000 |
| Total Time & Cost for Admin Panel Development | $10700 – $13200 |
Note: These are the costs considering a base development rate of $25/ hour.
From the above-given data, we can derive the cost of developing an MVP doctor booking app (MVP features + admin panel features) to be $22,150 to $28,500, while that for a complete app (MVP features + admin panel features + advanced features) is $41,950 – $55,000.
If you are short on budget and time allowance, go for MVP development. You can always add more features later as your app achieves market success.
Different countries have different costs of app development. Design and development of an online doctor appointment system can cost higher in some regions and lower in others.
As discussed in Step 4 of the app development process, you can control the cost of app development by outsourcing to a location where development costs are low.
Here is how much it will cost to make an on-demand doctor appointment app in different countries.
| Location | Hourly Development Rate | Average App Development Cost |
|---|---|---|
| USA | $50 – $150 | $210,00 – 625,000 |
| Canada | $50 – $200 | $210,000 – $835,000 |
| Brazil | $30 – $50 | $125,000 – $210,000 |
| UK | $60 – $75 | $250,000 – $2,90,000 |
| Ukraine | $35 – $45 | $145,000 – $185,000 |
| India | $15 – $25 | $65,000 – $105,000 |
| Indonesia | $30 – $40 | $125,000 – $165,000 |
| Australia | $35 – $100 | $145,000 – $415,000 |
As you can see in the above-given table, India is the location with the lowest development cost. This makes Indian app development agencies the globally leading choice for app development outsourcing.
This was all about the cost of online doctor scheduling app development. If you want to know how much your particular app will cost to develop, you must consult with an experienced doctor appointment app development company and send in your requirements.
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Now that you are aware of how much time and cost it will take to build a doctor appointment app, you can go ahead and start your app development process.
This was it for the blog and the topic on doctor appointment app development. Do you have more questions on the topic? Browse through the below-given FAQs to find their answers.
Websites are good for taking your business online initially and creating a digital presence. If you already have a website for booking doctor appointments, you can offer basic features to your patients.
However, to integrate high-end technologies like IoT and AI and provide top-quality features, having a mobile app is a must. Alternatively, you can go for hybrid development and create a web app and a mobile app using a single code base. You must consult with an experienced development agency to explore this possibility.
Developing an app can be a cost-intensive affair, especially if you have high requirements for the app. However, you can cut down the cost to design and develop the online doctor appointment system by going for MVP development, i.e., adding only the most essential features. Another option is to buy a readymade (white-label) solution from a development agency for a doctor appointment booking app.
You can also collaborate with a development agency that offers a payment milestone approach for its services. This concept is similar to EMI and involves paying for your project's development in chunks.
If you want to develop an app for doctor appointments with complete customizability, we recommend you outsource your app development requirements to an agency. Development agencies hold expertise in delivering high-quality and robust solutions and offer custom app development.
When you outsource your development project to an agency, you can benefit from the expertise of a complete team and ensure that your app's design and development is completely customized.
If you want to build a high-end app for booking appointments with physicians, you need to use the latest and top-notch technologies in the development process. Here are some of the most popular technologies used to create an appointment booking app.
| Development | Frameworks/Language |
|---|---|
| Front-end Development | CSS, Swift, React, Objective-C, Kotlin, AngularJS |
| Back-end Development | Laravel, Node.js, Python |
| OS Platforms | Android, iOS, Windows |
| Payment Gateway | Stripe, PayPal, Braintree |
| Cloud Computing | Google Cloud, AWS, Azure |
| Database | MongoDB, HBase, Postgres, Cassandra |
| Third-party API | Google Maps (Android), MapKit (iOS) |
Please know that these are only some of the most popular technologies used for app development, and there are many more apart from these. The tech stack that is ideal for your application will depend upon your individual requirements.
The risk factor will vary from business to business, strategy to strategy, and from one goal to another. However, it is commonly known that digitalization generally involves low risk and is a safe investment.
However, to minimize the chances of risk in your business, we recommend you especially focus on the planning and analysis stage of app development. By conducting thorough planning and market research, you are certain to understand the market requirements and make a doctor appointment app that fulfills these needs.
Undoubtedly, UI/UX design is one of the most important factors for developing a successful mobile application. We suggest focusing on this factor to develop an app with a functional and visually appealing user interface.
Of course, the better your app's UI will be, the better UX it will deliver to the users. Therefore, focusing on UI/UX design is essential to make a doctor appointment booking app with a high success rate.
We hope that by now, you are clear on everything you wanted to know about doctor appointment app development. If you have more questions on the topic or want to make a doctor booking app, you can connect with us today.
We are The Gray Bear, the top mobile app development agency based in the USA. We offer tailor-made solutions for mobile app development and are known for our diverse industry experience.
Get value-driven and robust solutions for your online doctor scheduling app development requirements, and grow your healthcare institution digitally with our services.